Jordan occupies an area rich in archaeological remains and religious traditions. The Jordanian desert was home to hunters from the Lower Paleolithic Period; their flint tools have been found widely distributed throughout the region. In the southeastern part of the country, at Mount AṭAl-Ṭubayq, rock carvings are found date from several prehistoric periods, the earliest of which have been attributed to the Paleolithic-Mesolithic era. The site at Tulaylāt al-Ghassūl in the Jordan Valley of a well-built village with painted plaster walls may represent transitional developments from the Neolithic to the Chalcolithic period.

The Early Bronze Age (c.3000–2100 BCEBC) is marked by deposits at the base of Dhībān. Although many sites have been found in the northern portion of the country, few have been excavated, and little evidence of settlement in this period is found south of AshAl-Shawbak. The region’s early Bronze Age culture was terminated by a nomadic invasion that destroyed the principal towns and villages, marking the end of an apparently peaceful period of development. Security was not reestablished until the Egyptians arrived after 1580 BCEBC. It was once believed that the area was unoccupied from 1900 to 1300 BCEBC, but a systematic archaeological survey has shown that the country had a settled population throughout the period. This was confirmed by the discovery of a small temple at Amman with Egyptian, Mycenaean, and Cypriot imported objects.

Biblical associations

Biblical accounts of the area, dating from the Middle Bronze Age onward, mention kingdoms such as Gilead in the north, Moab in central Jordan, and Midian in the south. At the time of the Exodus, the Israelites tried to pass through Edom in southern Jordan but were refused permission. They were at first repelled by the Amorites, whom they later defeated. The Israelite tribes of Gad and Reuben and half of the Manasseh group nonetheless settled in the conquered territory of the Ammonites, Amorites, and Bashan and rebuilt many of the towns they had partially destroyed. A record of this period is the Mesha (or Moabitestone ) Stone found at Dhībān in 1868, now in the Louvre Museum in Paris. It is inscribed in an eastern form of Canaanite, closely akin to Hebrew.

The next few centuries (1300–1000 BCEBC) were marked by constant raiding from both sides of the Jordan River. David attacked and devastated Moab and Edom. Although held for a time, Ammon with its capital, Rabbath Ammon (modern Amman), regained independence on the death of David (c.960 BCEBC). Solomon had a port on the Gulf of Aqaba at Ezion-geber (later modern Elatin , Israel), where copper ore was smelted from mines in the Wadi al-ʿArabah and trade was carried on with the southern Arabian states. However, hostilities remained constant between Judah and Edom; a Hebrew king, Amaziah, even captured Sela (Petra), the capital.

The next invaders were the Assyrians, who under Adadnirari III (811or /810–783 BCEBC) overran the eastern part of the country as far as Edom. Revolts against Assyrian rule occurred in the 760s and 750s, but the country was retaken in 734–733 by Tiglath-pileser III (reigned 745–727 BCEBC), who then devastated Israel, sent its people into exile, and divided the country into provinces under Assyrian governors. This policy of direct rule continued until the fall of the Assyrian empire in 612 BCEBC. The Assyrian texts are the first source to refer to the Nabataeans, who at this time occupied the land south and east of Edom (ancient Midian). After the fall of Assyria, the Moabites and Ammonites continued to raid Judah until the latter was conquered by the Neo-Babylonians under Nebuchadrezzar II. Little is known of the history of Jordan under the Neo-Babylonians and Persians, but during this period the Nabataeans infiltrated Edom and forced the Edomites into southern Palestine.

It was not until the Hellenistic rule of the Seleucids and the Ptolemies that the country prospered, trade increased, and new towns were built. Rabbath Ammon was renamed Philadelphia, and Jarash became Antioch-on-the-Chrysorrhoas, or Gerasa. Hostilities between the Seleucids and Ptolemies enabled the Nabataeans to extend their kingdom northward and to increase their prosperity based on the caravan trade with Arabia and Syria. The northern part of Jordan was for a time in Jewish hands, and there were constant struggles between the Jewish Maccabees and the Seleucids. Most of the Dead Sea Scrolls date from this period.

During 64–63 BCEBCthe kingdom of Nabataea was conquered by the Romans under Pompey, who restored the Hellenistic cities destroyed by the Jews and set up the Decapolis, a league of 10 ancient Greek cities. The country remained independent but paid imperial taxes. Roman policy seems to have been to maintain Nabataea as a buffer state against the desert tribes. In 25–24 BCEBCit served as a starting point for Aelius Gallus’ Gallus’s ill-starred expedition in search of Arabia Felix. Nabataea was finally absorbed into the Roman Empire by Trajan in AD106 CEas the province of Palaestina Tertia. Under Roman rule Jordan prospered, and many new towns and villages were established. The whole country, except the Decapolis, was made part of the new province called Arabia Petraea, with its capital first at Petra and later at Buṣrā ashal-Shām in Syria. After 313CE, Christianity became a recognized religion, and a large number of churches were built.

The Latin kingdom and Muslim domination

The area was devastated in the 6th and 7th centuries by the intermittent warfare between Byzantium and Sāsānian Persia. In 627 the emperor Heraclius finally defeated the Persians and reestablished order, but Byzantium, gravely weakened by the long struggle, was unable to face the unexpected menace of a new power that had arisen in Arabia. In 636 the Muslims, led Muslims—led by the famous “Sword of Islam,” Khālid ibn al-Walīd, destroyed Walīd—destroyed a Byzantine army at the Battle of the Yarmūk River and brought the greater part of Syria and Palestine under Muslim rule.

The caliphs of the Umayyad dynasty (660–750) established their capital at Damascus and built hunting lodges and palaces in the Jordanian desert. These can still be seen at sites such as Qaṣr ʿAmrah, Al-Kharānah, AṭAl-Ṭūbah, and Qaṣr al-Mushattā. Many Roman forts were also rebuilt. After the seizure of power by the ʿAbbāsids ʿAbbāsids seized power in 750, the capital was transferred to Baghdad, and Syria, which had been the Umayyad metropolitan province, was severely repressed. Jordan, now distant from the centre of power, became a backwater and slowly reverted returned to the old Bedouin way of life. With the capture of Jerusalem by the crusaders Crusaders in 1099CE, the Latin Kingdom kingdom of Jerusalem was extended east of the Jordan, a principality known as Oultre Jourdain was established, and a capital was set up at Al-Karak. After the crusaders Crusaders retreated, the history of Jordan remained mostly uneventful. Not until the 16th century did it submit to Ottoman rule and become part of the vilāyet (province) of Damascus.

In the 19th century the Ottomans settled Circassian, Caucasian, and other refugees in Jordan to protect their communications with Arabia; assisted by Germany, they completed in 1908 the Hejaz Railway linking Damascus and Medina.

Transjordan, the Hāshimite Kingdom, and the Palestine war

During World War I the Arabs joined the British against the Ottomans. In a revolt of 1916, in which they were assisted by Colonel T.E. Lawrence, the Arabs severed the Hejaz Railway. In July 1917 the army of Prince Fayṣal ibn Husayn (of the Hāshimite [or Hashemite] dynasty) captured Al-ʿAqabah, and by October 1918 Amman and Damascus were in Allied hands. In 1920 the Conference of San Remo in Italy created two mandates; one, over Palestine, was given to Great Britain, and the other, over Syria, went to France. This act effectively separated the area now occupied by Israel and Jordan from that of Syria. In November 1920 AbdullahʿAbdullāh, Fayṣal’s brother, arrived in Maʿān (then part of the Hejaz) with 2,000 armed supporters intent on gathering together tribes to attack the French, who had forced Fayṣal to relinquish his newly founded kingdom in Syria. By April 1921, however, the British had decided that Abdullah ʿAbdullāh would take over as ruler of what then became known as Transjordan.

Effectively, Turkish rule in Transjordan was simply replaced by British rule. The mandate, confirmed by the League of Nations in July 1922, gave the British virtually a free hand in administering the territory. However, in September, the establishment of “a Jewish national home” was explicitly excluded from the mandate’s clauses, and it was made clear that the area would also be closed to Jewish immigration. The British recognized on On May 25, 1923, the British recognized Transjordan’s independence under the rule of Emir AbdullahʿAbdullāh, but, as outlined in a treaty as well as the constitution in 1928, matters of finance, military, and foreign affairs would remain in the hands of a British “resident.” Full independence was finally achieved after World War II by a treaty concluded in London on March 22, 1946, and Abdullah ʿAbdullāh subsequently proclaimed himself king. A new constitution was promulgated, and in 1949 the name of the state was changed to the Hāshimite Kingdom of Jordan.

Throughout the interwar years Abdullah ʿAbdullāh had been dependent depended on British financial support. The British also assisted him in forming an elite force called the Arab Legion, comprising Bedouin troops but under the command of and trained by British officers, which was used to maintain and secure the allegiance of Abdullah’s ʿAbdullāh’s Bedouin subjects. On May 15, 1948, the day after the Jewish Agency proclaimed the independent state of Israel and immediately following the British withdrawal from Palestine, Transjordan joined its Arab neighbours in the first Arab-Israeli war. The Arab Legion, commanded by Glubb Pasha (John [later Sir John] Bagot Glubb), and Egyptian, Syrian, Lebanese, and Iraqi troops entered Palestine. Abdullah’s ʿAbdullāh’s primary purpose, which he had spelled out in secret discussions with Jewish envoys, was to extend his rule to include the area allotted to the Palestinian Arabs under the United Nations partition resolution of November 1947. Accordingly, he engaged his forces in the area region of Palestine now popularly known as the West Bank (the area just west of the Jordan River) and expelled Jewish forces from East Jerusalem (the Old City). When the Jordan-Israel armistice was signed on April 3, 1949, the West Bank and East Jerusalem—an area of about 2,100 square miles (5,400 square km)—came under Jordanian rule, and almost half a million Palestinian Arabs joined the half - million Transjordanians. One year later, Jordan formally annexed this territory. Israel and Britain had tacitly agreed to Abdullah ʿAbdullāh keeping the area, but the Arab countries and most of the world opposed the king’s action; only Britain and Pakistan recognized the annexation. The incorporation into Jordan of the West Bank , including some 400,000 Palestinians as well as Palestinians and a large refugee population that was hostile to the Hāshimite regime , brought severe economic and political consequences. On the other hand, Abdullah ʿAbdullāh gained such Muslim shrines as the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem’s Old City, which compensated for his father’s loss of Mecca and Medina to Ibn Saʿūd a generation earlier.

Abdullah ʿAbdullāh was assassinated at the Al-Aqṣā Mosque in Jerusalem on July 20, 1951, by a young Palestinian frustrated by the king’s hostility toward Palestinian nationalism. Abdullah’s In August 1952 the parliament declared ʿAbdullāh’s son and successor, TalalṬalāl, was declared mentally unfit to ruleby parliament in August 1952 , and he abdicated in favour of his eldest son, Hussein Ḥussein ibn-TalalṬalāl, who was crowned king on his 18th birthday, May 2, 1953.

Jordan under King HusseinḤussein

Securing the throne, 1953 to c.1960

The history of Jordan after 1953 was largely shaped by King Hussein’s Ḥussein’s policies to secure his throne and to retain or regain the West Bank for the Hāshimite dynasty. Jordan’s relationship with Israel in the first decade of the Jewish state’s existence was uneasy but tolerable, though bloody raids and acts of terrorism carried out by both sides added to the tension. Jordan’s involvement in the Palestinian question led as much to a contest with Egypt over Jordan’s future as it did to a struggle with Israel. In particular, it repeatedly forced Jordan to balance relations with and between various Arab nations, the Palestinians, and the West and Israel. Thus, popular demonstrations, especially in the West Bank, and pressure from Egypt prevented Hussein Ḥussein in 1955 from signing the Baghdad Pact, a pro-Western mutual defense treaty that he had initiated between Great Britain, Turkey, Iran, and Iraq. Hussein—bowing The next year Ḥussein—bowing to popular pressure and in a show of support for Egyptian efforts at pan-Arab leadership—in 1956 dismissed leadership—dismissed his British advisers, including Commander in Chief Glubb, and abrogated the Anglo-Jordanian treaty of 1946. However, when members of the National Guard, drawn mainly from the West Bank, attempted a coup in April 1957, the king, supported by loyal East Bank Bedouins, purged the legislature of Palestinian nationalists and extremists, banned political parties, and set up a royal dictatorship to curb domestic unrest.

After Egypt and Syria merged in February 1958 to form the United Arab Republic (UAR; 1958–61), King Fayṣal II persuaded HusseinḤussein, his cousin, to join in a federal union with Iraq. In July, however, Faysal Fayṣal and his family were killed in an army coup in Iraq coordinated by Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt. HusseinḤussein, realizing his regime was under threat, turned to Great Britain and the United States for assistance. Washington agreed to provide additional military and economic aid. The British government, eager to see the pro-Western Hussein Ḥussein secure in Jordan, stationed British paratroops in the country until late 1958. As a result, anti-Hāshimite Palestinians supported by Nasser made no further attempts to overthrow the monarchy. By the early 1960s the United States was providing Hussein Ḥussein with about $100 million annually, which stimulated economic development and, despite a number of assassination attempts, secured the king’s future.

The PLO and the June 1967 war

The emergence in the late 1960s of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and the militant group Fatah represented a potential threat to Jordan’s sovereignty on in the West Bank as well as to Israel. In early 1965, with the support of Egypt and the radical Baʿth Party government in Syria, Fatah began a series of Jordan-based raids against Israel that inflicted serious casualties and property damage. Israel retaliated by raiding the West Bank in an effort to deter these destructive military operations. Relations between Jordan and Syria and Egypt and between the Palestinians and Amman soon deteriorated. Hussein Ḥussein continued private talks with Israel over the internal and external dangers both countries faced. In late 1966 the Israeli army made a devastating raid into the West Bank village of AsAl-Samu south of Hebron. Hussein Ḥussein responded by attempting to stop the passage of Syrian-based Palestinian guerrillas coming through Jordan into Israel, and he eventually broke off diplomatic ties with Syria. However, as tension mounted between Israel and Egypt and Syria in the spring of 1967, Jordan reversed its position and signed a defense pact with Egypt and Syria. Israeli and Jordanian forces clashed in East Jerusalem, and King Hussein in June 1967 Ḥussein joined Egypt and Syria in the third Arab-Israeli warin June 1967.

The June 1967 war was a watershed in the modern history of Jordan. Within 48 hours Israeli forces had overrun the entire territory west of the Jordan River, capturing Bethlehem, Hebron, Jericho, NāblusNābulus, Rām Allāh, Janīn, and the city of Jerusalem. Jordan suffered heavy casualties and lost one-third of its most fertile land; its already overburdened economy was then faced with supporting some 200,000 tens of thousands of new refugees. Hussein Ḥussein had regarded entering the war as the lesser of two evils: he believed that if he had not joined Egypt and Syria, they would have supported the Palestinians in overthrowing his regime. The loss of the West Bank and Jerusalem, devastating as it was, was preferable to the loss of his kingdom.

From 1967 to civil war

Following the June war Hussein Ḥussein faced three major problems: how to recover from the economic losses caused by the war, how to live with Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and the annexation of East Jerusalem, and how to preserve the Hāshimite throne against a considerably augmented and increasingly hostile Palestinian population. The war reversed the progress made in Jordan’s economy prior to June 1967, even with financial aid from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Libya; yet within a short period both the United States and Great Britain resumed economic and military aid, which helped to restore its economy and to preserve peace. In 1971 arrangements were also made with Israel enabling Jordanian cultivation Jordanians to farm in the Jordan Valley.

Despite the fact that an Arab summit meeting held in Khartoum, Sudan, in August 1967 passed the “three noes” resolution—no peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, and no negotiations with Israel—King Hussein Israel—Ḥussein resumed his secret negotiations with Israel over the disposition of the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Relations with Israel were thus inseparably linked to the future of the Palestinians. Hussein Ḥussein sought the return of all the lost territory but still privately recognized Israel and cooperated with it across a wide range of issues. Even so, he was not prepared to sign a peace treaty with the Jewish state. The two nations countries were thus no longer enemies and worked together against PLO terrorism, but little progress was made toward a lasting peace.

Hussein’s Ḥussein’s relations with the PLO, which under the chairmanship of Yāsir ʿArafāt openly challenged the king’s control in East Jordan, reached a crisis in September 1970. The radical Marxist Palestinian group, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a radical Marxist Palestinian group, hijacked four international airliners and blew up three of them in Dawson’s Field, a deserted airstrip in the Jordanian desert. Hussein Ḥussein declared martial law, and civil war (later remembered as Black September) erupted. When 250 Syrian tanks entered northern Jordan in support of the PLO, Hussein Ḥussein was forced not only to call upon military assistance from the United States and Great Britain but also to allow overflights by Israel to attack the Syrian forces. The Syrian forces were defeated, and a peace agreement, in which Hussein Ḥussein made concessions to the PLO, was signed by Hussein Ḥussein and ʿArafāt in Cairo on September Sept. 27, 1970; by July 1971, Hussein Ḥussein had forced the PLO guerrillas out of Jordan.

From 1973 to the intifadaHussein intifāḍah

Ḥussein chose not to join Egypt and Syria in their surprise attack on Israel in October 1973, although he did make a symbolic gesture by sending tanks to assist Syria in the Golan Heights. In negotiations immediately following the war, Hussein Ḥussein once again demanded the return of the West Bank and East Jerusalem from Israel. He was bitter that Israel—in response to pressure from U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger—proposed a withdrawal of its forces from Israeli-occupied Egyptian territory but made no such overtures to Jordan. However, by August 1974 discussions were under way with Israel over “disengagement accords,” which recognized Jordan as the speaker for the Palestinians and encouraged regional economic and tactical cooperation, especially in relation to the threat posed by Palestinian guerrilla groups. In October leaders of the Arab League at an Arab summit meeting in Rabat, Morocco, declared that the Palestinian people, under the leadership of the PLO (“their sole legitimate representative”), had the right to establish a national independent authority in liberated Palestine. In response Hussein Ḥussein announced that his country would exclude the West Bank from Jordan and would never enter into a federation with a Palestinian state, as such a step would inevitably give the Palestinian population a majority and bring about the loss of his kingdom.

Faced with American reluctance to supply arms and an Egyptian-Israeli Sinai accord, Jordan with Syria agreed in August 1975 to form a joint “supreme command” to coordinate their foreign and military policies in an effort to control PLO activities. In March 1977 Hussein Ḥussein met with ʿArafāt in Cairo, their first meeting since Black September in 1970. In July 1977 HusseinḤussein, Egyptian President Anwar el-Sādāt, and U.S. President Jimmy Carter once again discussed the possibility of a link between Jordan and a Palestinian “entity,” but it was denounced by the PLO.

The election of the right-wing Likud bloc in Israel with Menachem Begin as prime minister in May 1977 brought relations between Jordan and Israel to a low ebb. Determined to annex and retain all of the West Bank, which Israel now called Judaea and Samaria, Begin greatly accelerated the program of constructing Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza. Under the terms of the Camp David Accords in 1978, Israel committed itself to granting autonomy to the Palestinians and to negotiating the future status of the occupied territories, but Hussein Ḥussein condemned the agreement and completely broke off the 15-year secret negotiations with Israel. From late 1977 until 1984, Jordanian contacts with Israel basically essentially came to a halt. Hussein Ḥussein became increasingly alarmed at the growing popularity in Israel of the view that Jordan was, in fact, the Palestinian state, which would also resolve the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982 fueled fears in Amman that the first step in the process of transferring Palestinians to the East Bank was under way.

In the early 1980s Hussein Ḥussein sought an accommodation with ʿArafāt and the PLO after the PLO had been expelled from Lebanon and its bases had been destroyed; the two men reached a temporary and somewhat uneasy alliance. In order to strengthen his legitimacy in the eyes of Palestinians, HusseinḤussein, in 1984, allowed the Palestine National Council (a virtual parliament of the Palestinians) to meet in Amman. In February 1985 he signed an agreement with ʿArafāt pledging cooperation with the PLO and coordination of a joint peace initiative. Hussein Ḥussein believed that ʿArafāt would accept a confederation of the West and East Banks with autonomy for the Palestinians of the West Bank under Jordanian sovereignty. ʿArafāt, however, had not given up hope of an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank, although he was agreeable to an eventual confederation between such a future Palestinian state and Jordan.

In February 1986 HusseinḤussein, frustrated by ʿArafāt’s ambiguity regarding the PLO’s recognition of Israel and renunciation of terrorism, repudiated the Amman agreement with ʿArafāt and broke off negotiations with the PLO. Although the king was careful not to expel the PLO from Jordan entirely, despite an increase in guerrilla violence in the West Bank, he did order the closure of the PLO offices in Amman. In a complete turnaround in the Jordanian policy that had been followed since the Arab summit at Rabat in 1974, Hussein Ḥussein declared that he would now be responsible for the economic welfare of the West Bank Palestinians. In addition, the king announced that the West Bank would be included in an upcoming five-year plan for Jordan and approved an increase in the number of Palestinian seats (to about half) in an enlarged National Assembly. His goal was to create a Jordanian-Palestinian-Israeli administration that would make the West Bank independent of the PLO and enable him to reach a settlement with Israel, in which he would regain at least partial sovereignty of the area.

By April 1987 Hussein Ḥussein and Shimon Peres, then Israel’s foreign minister, had agreed to a UN-sponsored conference involving all parties to seek a comprehensive peace; Palestinian representatives would be part of a Jordanian-Palestinian delegation. Although the proposal was endorsed by U.S. President Ronald Reagan, Israeli prime minister Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir wanted a conference with only Jordan and resisted American U.S. pressure for a comprehensive peace conference. Hussein Ḥussein scored a diplomatic triumph by staging an Arab League summit meeting in Amman in November, during which league members agreed to reestablish diplomatic relations with Egypt that had been severed following the Camp David Accords. More importantly for HusseinḤussein, the Palestinian issue was not the main topic; instead, the Iran-Iraq War, then in its eighth year, took precedence.

The situation changed dramatically in December, however, with the outbreak of the intifadaintifāḍah, a Palestinian uprising on the West Bank. King Hussein Ḥussein quickly realized that the uprising was directed against his rule as well as that of the Israelis. His immediate response was to support the intifadaintifāḍahpublicly and to offer aid to families of victims of Israeli reprisals in an effort to deflect the hostility toward his regime. But the intifadaintifāḍahleaders (known as the Unified Command) renounced the king’s overtures, and ʿArafāt quickly assumed the role of spokesman for the revolt. The intifadaintifāḍahbrought to a halt Jordanian and Israeli plans for an economic path to peace. Hussein Ḥussein thus canceled the five-year plan for the West Bank.

Renouncing claims to the West Bank

An emergency meeting of the Arab League in June 1988 gave the PLO financial control of support for the Palestinians, thereby virtually acknowledging ʿArafāt as their spokesman. In response, Hussein Ḥussein renounced all Jordanian claim claims to the West Bank, allowing the PLO to assume full responsibility there. He dissolved the Jordanian parliament (half of whose members were West Bank representatives), ceased salary payments to 21,000 West Bank civil servants, and ordered that West Bank Palestinian passports be converted to two-year travel documents. When the Palestine National Council recognized the PLO as the sole legal representative of the Palestinian people and proclaimed the independence of a purely notional Palestine on November Nov. 15, 1988, Hussein Ḥussein immediately extended recognition to the Palestinian entity.

In November 1989 Jordan held its first parliamentary elections in 22 years. Opposition groups, particularly the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood, gained Brotherhood—in the form of the Islamic Action Front (IAF)—gained more seats than the pro-government candidates, and the newly elected prime minister, Mudar Badran, promised to lift the martial law that had been in place since 1967—a promise not fully kept until July 1991.

From the First Persian Gulf War to peace with Israel

Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in August 1990 and the subsequent First Persian Gulf War (fought principally in January–February 1991) forced Hussein Ḥussein to choose between two allies, the United States and Iraq. The king leaned heavily toward the Iraqi leader Saddam HusseinṢaddām Ḥussein, who also received a zealous and vocal groundswell of support from the Jordanian people. In addition, trade with Iraq represented two-fifths of the kingdom’s gross domestic product. Kuwait’s allies immediately cut off all aid to Jordan, imposed an air and sea blockade, and condemned King Hussein’s Ḥussein’s actions. To make matters worse, between 200,000 and 300,000 refugees from Kuwait were expelled or fled (back) to Jordan. However, by the end of 1991 the United States and Israel were again seeking Hussein’s Ḥussein’s support for an American-Israeli peace initiative.

The first multiparty general election since 1956 was scheduled for November 1993. In August the king dissolved the 80-member House of Representatives (the lower house of the National Assembly) and announced that the election would be conducted on a one-person-one-vote system rather than on the old “slate” system that allowed voters to cast as many votes as there were representatives in their constituency. In the election the number of seats won by anti-Zionist Islamic militants—who made up the Islamic Action Front ( IAF), a coalition of Islamic groupings and the largest of Jordan’s political parties—was reduced from 36 to 16, which gave the king the support he needed to carry out his policy.

Hussein Ḥussein expressed public reservations over a PLO-Israeli accord in 1993 but nonetheless stated his willingness to support the Palestinian people. He was concerned over issues relating to Jordan’s economic links with the West Bank and the future status of Palestinians in Jordan. About a year later, Jordan and Israel signed a peace treaty , in which Hussein Ḥussein was recognized as the custodian of the Muslim holy sites in East Jerusalem.

Hussein’s Ḥussein’s last years and the ascension of ʿAbdullāh II

In January 1995 Hussein Ḥussein signed accords with the PLO pledging support for Palestinian autonomy and the establishment of a Palestinian state including that included East Jerusalem. The Palestinians nevertheless remained hostile to the peace treaty with Israel, as did Syria and a large segment of the population led by the IAF. Hussein Ḥussein became increasingly frustrated with what he considered to be the obstructionist policies of the Israeli government, but he still played a central role in brokering a deal between Israel and the PLO regarding Israeli withdrawal from Hebron in the West Bank in early 1997. In addition, Hussein Ḥussein acted as a mediator between the Israelis and Palestinians in an agreement made in October 1998 at the Wye Plantation in eastern Maryland.

By then Hussein’s Ḥussein’s health was failing. Shortly before his death in February 1999, he proclaimed his son , Abdullah, ʿAbdullāh to be his successor, rather than his brother , Hassan (Ḥasan), who had been the crown prince. King Abdullah In the main, King ʿAbdullāh II continued to carry out his father’s policies and maintained that the new government he formed in March would focus on integrating economic reforms, bettering Jordan’s relations with its Arab neighbours, and improving the status of women. The king faced numerous problems, however, including a growing tide of domestic dissent over the country’s close ties with the United States and its continued diplomatic relations with Israel.

In subsequent years, the new monarch carved out a vigorous foreign policy that generally reflected his original goals. Strong political and economic bonds were formed with neighbouring Arab states—especially Egypt and Syria—and the king reshuffled his cabinet on several occasions while attempting to modernize and invigorate the economy. Government security services thwarted several violent attacks by Islamic militants (directed mostly at the security services themselves), and parliamentary elections took place in 2003. The new parliament was made up mostly of independents, but the IAF polled highest among the organized parties.